Large "Blister Pill Card" Punch Unit

Variable Punch Unit for Pharmaceutical Labels

T&P has had over 40 years experience supplying male/female rotary punch tooling for the medical industry. In the mid-sixties we made the first units for punching medical suture package cards for Ethicon, a division of Johnson & Johnson. Numerous variations were made over the next 40 years for this product line as the engineers at T&P worked with the staff at Ethicon to improve their production process.

In the seventies and eighties T&P perfected the punching of 1/16" "code holes" for pharmaceutical labels. Hundreds of punch units for dozens of different suppliers were designed and manufactured to accommodate the one-hole and two-hole labels that fit into what was commonly referred to as the "New Jersey Grid Pattern". This product line still continues with a few remaining suppliers. In the late 1980's a "variable" punch unit was designed and marketed to allow the numerous different repeats to be punched on one machine in order to reduce the cost of investment. Another large area of interest was in "medical charts". These products include many different, continuously printed charts that usually require small round holes on one side and small oval holes on the other side to align the precisely printed graph paper with the printer. The punching needs to be very precise and usually includes several sets of rings on a business forms press. Most of the repeats were 5 mm, 1/4", or 10 mm so the tooling utilized "tool steel" die rings which had all of the holes machined into a solid sleeve since individual dies could not be used.

Pill cards have also been a very large part of T&P's medical product tooling experience. Since about 1978, the company has been building very precise, complex multi-station tools to punch, slit, perf, and sometimes even crease pill cards of all sizes and shapes, including 21, 28 and 31 day cards, rectangular cards, and round cards.

Most pill cards were for round pills which required a hole about 9/32" to 3/8" in diameter. A recent innovation has been the addition of a large rectangular or oval cut out to allow a printed date or the lot size information to show through. Recently, a very large pill card application for punching 1-3/32" x 19/32" ovals in .020" thick board stock was designed and manufactured utilizing the latest technology to allow punch and die cylinders to be produced in one station rather than in two for a Chromas/Aquaflex press.

Quite a bit of our focus over the last 10 years has been to design and fabricate various specialty punch units and sometimes even complete unwind/rewind systems such as those for the medical diagnostic strip market. Several large medical companies have been using T&P for years to help keep their production line running efficiently. Most of these products require tooling manufactured to very close tolerances and sometimes need additional converting operations such as slitting, perfing, die cutting, or embossing.

Whether your needs are for pharmaceutical labels, medical charts, pill cards, or some other precisely engineered medical application, remember that T&P has probably already "been there, done that!" Let us assist you in your next medical packaging or product project.
 
Complete Converting System
T&P was recently approached by one of the world's leading manufacturers of healthcare products with a request to design and manufacture a complete rotary system to unwind, punch, slit, and rewind diagnostic strips. Rotary punching was not feasible because of an extremely complicated pattern that had very small angles and complex cut-outs that simply were not suitable for rotary punching. However, T&P created an alternative method of production for the customer that included a rotary unwind, slit, and dual rewind but with a hydraulically operated reciprocating (or flat bed) punching system. This extremely precise flatbed tooling provided the desired results which rotary tooling could not. This individualized design, which took into account all of the customer's requirements, enabled T&P to provide this highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art machine.

Automatic Flatbed Punching System

600mm circ. P/D Tooling to Punch Medical Charts on a Goebel press

Medical pouch punch unit for 42 in. wide Kidder press

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